How Would YOU Vote?

This story circulated recently on the internet and most of us found it pretty sad:

Teacher Lets Morningside Students Vote Out Classmate

Original link no longer works, but someone thought to create a Wiki page of the incident.

And yet.....how many routinely watch inane "reality" shows that do the same thing and call it entertainment? It's too bad that this mentality has seeped down to touch the lives of 5 year-olds in school classrooms - at the hands of a teacher, no less....but then again, why would it surprise us?

Is it not true that a public school environment is the perfect greenhouse for the seeds of culture to grow? In fact, one might argue that this has become one of the purposes of a public education (to develop or change and grow the culture of a nation).

When the seeds of culture grow and flourish and reproduce we should not be surprised when public classrooms become the greenhouse. This particular situation is perhaps a caricature of the type of socialization (or better yet, "culturalization") one can expect from today's schools, but is it not a very real likeness of what today's children are exposed to in today's culture?  Day in and day out?  As I read this particular story, I couldn't help but wonder how many hundreds of times similar (though different) situations have probably played out in other classrooms, but because no one was indignant enough or hurt enough to complain, the media didn't get their claws into it and we've simply never heard about them.

And yet, once this story did hit the airwaves, that parents likely sent their children who were pawns in this exercise back into Morningside Elementary School is what is most head-shakingly sad to me.

Wouldn't you just get a charge if, for once, parents marched on a school and demanded proper treatment of all (meaning students, teachers, administrators and parents), a proper education of their children and a proper say in the day-to-day happenings of the school their children have been entrusted to, and that their tax monies support?

Then again, we might find ourselves with truly public education if that sort of thing went on.

It's Greek to Me

We're currently reading aloud Padraic Colum's The Children's Homer and I'm finding myself from time to time stumbling over the pronunciation of some of the more obscure Greek names.

I decided to google for some help and came upon the following resources:

This link provides a quick guide for general pronunciation of Greek names.

And this site has some fun information, but a bit more than I need to know at the moment.

Here and here and here are some great links to dig futher into Ancient Greek history. Fun!